a chronicle of a father and brewer honing his craft…

I have compiled a list of a few take-aways that I have gathered from my time spent at Joyride and River North breweries. Some of these things were insights passed down from brewers, or things I picked up along the way… Before you do anything, take a second and consider the implication. A few additional seconds of thought are worth…

Today I got to take apart and clean the Heat Exchanger at Goldspot Brewing. After a very slow runoff we decided that the hop material and broken bag of pink peppercorns might be causing problems with flow through the plates. This was a great chance for me to learn how the heat exchanger is put together and to learn how…

Riff Raff Brewing is located in Pagosa, CO inside an old victorian house in Downtown Pagosa. The brewhouse is really small, taking up about half of the house, with the remaining area used as a restaurant. The brewhouse is a very hands-on system, and does not appear to be much more than a scaled-up homebrew system. A lot of work…

Usually my day at the brewery starts with checking the board for the schedule for the day. Usually, the board looks something like this… Can/Keg Pils, and the count on kegs and packaging. Cellar cleaning needs, including cleaning (CIP) and passivation. Transfers Dry hops and hop dumps. It’s always good to see active fermentation around the brewhouse. I believe that…

As I’m gaining more time at the brewery, I am learning and getting more proficient at the operations of the canning line. I now am feeling very comfortable operating the line and understanding when and where faults occur. Beyond just keeping the system working, I am slowly learning how to adjust settings to make thing run more smoothly. This often…

A few weeks ago Miranda and decided to make a trip to the brewery for the taproom release of a one-off beer which I got to choose the dry hops. It was a lot of fun just having a beer in the taproom without worrying about how many kegs are left to be cleaned or how much time is left…

This week I got to help out with brewing River North’s Anniversary Ale 7, a Belgian-style bière de brut brewed with Sauvignon blanc grape must. Bone dry and ridiculously bubbly, this champagne-like brew will serve as the centerpiece to next month’s anniversary party. In addition to helping with the mashout…I was also able to catch a peak at two of…

January Hazy Sunday, debuting on January 27, 2019. The guys at River North were nice enough to allow me to choose the hops (from a few they had on hand) to dryhop in the keg for a small one-off release. I decided to choose the two New Zealand varietals, as they had the best fruit-forward aroma that I thought would…

Now that I’m in full swing with packaging at River North, I thought it would be a good idea to show you a few of the things that have caught my eye, or surprised me in the packaging component of the brewing operations. I would have thought that the packaging process was nearly 100% efficient, with little waste of beer.…